


Ever Rising Circles

by Owlship



Series: Riding the SkyTrain [7]
Category: Transformers: Cyberverse
Genre: Developing Relationship, Emotional Obliviousness, F/M, Making stuff up about Skywarp's Teleportation Abilities, Other, Pranks and Practical Jokes, Robots getting drunk, Robots getting sick, Seeker Trines, Size Difference, Size Kink, Spark Sexual Interfacing (Transformers), Sticky Sexual Interfacing, Tactile Sexual Interfacing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-14
Updated: 2020-10-14
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:55:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27010858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Owlship/pseuds/Owlship
Summary: It doesn't occur to Skywarp until after she's heading back out that she just made plans with him not to frag, not to run a job, but just totalk.It shouldn't be weird, she's had fragbuddies before, but there's something about Astrotrain that just demands her attention in ways she doesn't know how to think of. And to be planning on explaining to him the cornerstone of seeker society, the bond that lives in her spark and makes her part of a greater whole, that just feels almost too much somehow.
Relationships: Astrotrain/Skywarp (Transformers), Skywarp/Starscream/Thundercracker (Transformers), Skywarp/Thundercracker (Transformers)
Series: Riding the SkyTrain [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1926703
Comments: 6
Kudos: 22





	Ever Rising Circles

**Author's Note:**

> Picks up directly after "[Rattle Though](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26904712)" which ended mid-scene so that's why the beginning of this one might seem a bit abrupt. Sorry.
> 
> I'm really sad I couldn't cover "Rack n Ruin n Ratchet" from Astrotrain's POV but the pacing was already getting wonky enough, alas. :'( We're up to "Dweller in the Depths" with this part though so yay! Nearly there!

"I think you owe me an apology," he says when he's wrapped his hands around her, picking her up effortlessly. Skywarp could get away if she wanted to, of course, but she finds she's pretty okay with where this is going.

It's probably the most pleasant outcome she can imagine for being interrupted mid-prank, Astrotrain not angry but instead amused, like he appreciates the effort she's gone to in covering his berthroom in image-prints. He looks better when he's smiling, she thinks, and is proud to be the one who wiped away the dour seriousness from his faceplate- at least for the moment.

"An apology for what?" she says, feigning innocence. "I'm just adding some color to the place."

He raises an optical ridge, clearly not buying it. Not that she expected him to. He brings her closer to his chest, not really gripping her but just holding her in his hands. It's entirely different from his reaction to her first prank, when she dusted him with some glitter and he nearly ripped her wing off.

"I can _make_ you apologize," Astrotrain says, his voice deep and compelling.

"Oh yeah?" she replies, and leans in so she can touch his chest, just tracing one of the ridges in his plating. "I'd like to see you try."

Skywarp flashes a sultry smile up at him, and in response he rips her away from his chassis to press her to the edge of the berth instead, his own frame folding down to his knees. She squirms in anticipation, still caged in by his digits.

"Keep your panels closed," he says.

"What? That's not fair!" she whines, and widens her optics in her best pleading expression.

He just smirks, and runs a digit down her front, stopping just shy of her modesty panel. "Or you could apologize," he says.

She narrows her gaze at him; challenge accepted.

It quickly becomes clear that Astrotrain has been paying attention to the erogenous zones of her frame, and also that he's a slagging _aft_. He's strong enough to keep her in place effortlessly while he teases her sensornet, big digits stroking and caressing her all over, from quivering wingtip to thrusters and everywhere in between- he even rubs directly over her closed modesty panels, after telling her he'll stop if she opens them.

Skywarp has to keep manually sending a signal to keep them from transforming open, because her interface protocols can't understand why she isn't using the array designed for this purpose. Yeah, technically you can overload just from this kind of tactile sensation to your frame, but it's _slow_ and no one really does it outside of horribly cheesy holo-roms.

He isn't letting up, though, no matter how much she whines and begs. He just keeps touching her, pinching her wings with enough pressure to ache like an oncoming storm, tapping her cockpit so the glass rings with hollow vibrations, even dipping his helm down to kiss her as well as he's able at his full size.

"This isn't _fair_ ," she whines, trying and failing to direct him to at least pay attention to her closed panels, because _any_ friction against them would be better than nothing.

"Are you going to apologize?" Astrotrain says, intake hovering between her spread legs. She's sure he's getting charged up from this, but he doesn't seem impatient.

"Never," she says with more conviction than she really feels. She's stubborn, yes, but there's only so much she can take when her circuits are crackling, eager for the discharge of overload that just won't come.

He smirks and laves his glossa down her front in a warm, wet streak. Skywarp wails in frustration and feels the covers over her hardline arrays slide open, entirely without her direction.

He pulls back, optics focused on her chest. "I'm not hardlining you, either," he says. The tip of one digit strokes her left array nevertheless, the feeling of it on her sensitive port and waiting jack shooting straight through her circuits.

She grabs for his digit, trying to at least keep him touching her there- it's not as sensitive as spike and valve, of course, but it would be enough to overload her if he keeps it up.

But he tugs his hand away with barely any effort. She glares at him, frustrated and revved up and feeling like her system is going to meltdown rather than overload.

Astrotrain flips her over without warning, so her front is pressed to the berth.

"Hey!" she yelps, because this is definitely worse, this is _torture_ what he's doing to her.

"Ready to apologize?" he asks.

She whines, but shakes her helm.

She can't see him now, she has no warning for whatever he's going to do, and she jumps in place when he licks her wing from root to tip. And then squeals when he blows air over the damp metal, a shockingly cold contrast that sends her sensornet into a tailspin.

He's going to deactivate her, he really is. Skywarp wishes she was more upset.

She hears the distinct noise of a panel retracting and panics, but though her valve is putting out enough lubrication to leak out the seams and her spike is pressed right against its cover, her manual commands haven't wavered. Which means it's not her panels, a conclusion she comes to just as she feels the hot weight of something that is very definitely not another digit against her back.

She groans in frustration. He's got his spike out, he'll get the friction he needs for an overload- and she can't even watch!

"You're such an aft," she whines, shuddering as he starts rocking his spike back and forth. Lubrication drips from the tip onto her plating, charge crackling as it tries to leap across the fluid bridge.

Astrotrain hums, and tweaks the tip of one wing, just shy of denting the metal. "If you just apologize," he says, voice low and coaxing.

"Alright!" she forces out in a gasp, "I'm sorry! Please just let me overload..."

"Was that so hard?" he says, smugness radiating out of his vocalizer.

Skywarp would kick him or power up her null rays or something, but before she does he slips a digit between her thighs and rubs firmly against her still-closed modesty panels, and she can't concentrate on anything except the overload that blasts through her.

Her vision totally fuzzes over with static before winking out entirely, vocalizer glitching and audials ringing, random servos firing all over her frame at the sudden release of more charge than her system knows what to do with. It would be amazing, _should_ be amazing, except her warp drive tries to activate amid the chaos and the misfiring that results douses her processor in hot-cold agony.

She can't function for what feels like an eon but is probably no more than an astrocycle or two, her spark skittering and jumping like it wants to leap from the confines of her modified spark casing.

Awareness slams back into her processor when she feels Astrotrain's spike bump the back of her helm, still rocking against her because of course he has no reason to think her flailing is from anything other than a good hard overload.

That's fine, she tells herself, that's more than fine because she doesn't _want_ him- or anyone else- to have any clue. And she can't really do much from this position anyway, pinned in place between his spike and his berth as she is, so it's fine that she just lays there for a moment to reestablish her equilibrium.

She doesn't really like being immobilized _during_ a clang, though, so once Skywarp is reasonably confident she can coordinate her struts she starts to squirm her way out from underneath his spike.

"Going somewhere?" he says, pausing his languid thrusts. One of his giant hands appears in her field of view and she thinks he's going to shove her back into position, but he just holds it in the air like- oh, he's offering her a hand up.

She grabs ahold of his digits and hauls herself up, legs still shaky. His spike gleams where it juts out of his frame, so unbelievably huge at his full size. She should leave right now, she thinks, it'd serve him right for teasing her and extorting an apology from her- but she doesn't dare try to warp right now, and running for the door is tacky.

"Oh, I dunno," she says, all fake casualness as she reaches out to touch one of the tempting bio-lights studded along the length of his spike. "Is there anything worth staying for?"

Astrotrain looks down at her with hooded optics. "I can think of a few things."

One thing leads to another, and somehow Skywarp finds herself dozing off on top of his chassis, transfluid congealing sticky and uncomfortable in her seams and an alert pinging her about a meeting she has very much missed at this point. She dismisses the alert from her HUD and checks her chrono, wincing when she reads the time.

Underneath her Astrotrain is still and silent in recharge, only the autonomous functions of his frame whirring away quietly.

She stretches herself a little, the hand he has on her back a welcome weight. She hadn't meant to fall into recharge, and doubts he did, either, but he's just so _warm_ against her sensornet it was all too easy to get comfortable and then let her processor slip into a more power-conserving mode.

But now it's late in the cycle, and this is very definitely not her own berthroom.

As if on cue, her comm pings her with a call request from Thundercracker. ::You coming home tonight?:: he asks when she picks up, his voice carefully not judgemental.

Skywarp never tamps down her end of the trine-link unless she's planning something she doesn't want them to know about, so he undoubtedly knows she spent the cycle fragging. It usually takes an exceptional partner for him to want to 'face outside of the trine, but he doesn't care if she and Starscream jump every mecha to catch their optics.

So why does she feel uncomfortable, almost guilty?

::Yeah, of course:: she says, and starts wriggling to free herself from Astrotrain's hold.

He stirs, optics a dim glow as the shutters open a slit.

"Shh," she whispers, the dark of his berthroom feeling unaccountably intimate. "Go back to recharge."

His hold on her tightens momentarily, then releases. Skywarp slips the rest of the way out from under his hand and navigates down his frame, careful not to step on his wings- even if they _are_ practically sensationless slabs. His optics blink back out and she ex-vents.

::Going to hit the washracks first:: she tells Thundercracker, because it'll be bad enough going through the halls like this- she isn't going to endure whatever judgemental looks he'll give her if she shows up a mess from helm to pede.

::Might be recharging when you get in:: he says, and she hums an acknowledgement.

How strange, Skywarp reflects as she steps into the hallway, that she's leaving one slumbering berthpartner to return to another. It's not the first time this situation has occurred- both with casual frags, and between the members of her trine- but it feels... She shakes her helm. She doesn't have a clue what it feels like this time.

She visits Starscream as often as she can, which isn't very. A mecha in stasis requires very little energon- truthfully, he only needs a drip at all because his self-repair is slowly trying to heal the damage to his frame- so she only _has_ to stop by once a month or so to check he hasn't run out.

Thundercracker hasn't been back, at least not as far as she can tell. He hasn't visited with her, anyway.

She tries to always bring a present, even though she knows Screamer won't notice. Today it's an exotic alien crystal which glows faintly in ever-shifting hues. Skywarp sets it on the table next to the med slab, the soft light washing strangely against the horrible Quintesson device attached to his helm.

"That cost a ton of credits," she tells him, even though it's really just a cheap trinket she won in a game of Praxus Fold 'Em, "So you'd better not wake up and knock it to the ground, you hear?"

She waits a beat, but there's no response. Starscream lays there on the med slab gathering dust like he has ever since she set him up here, the only signs of functioning provided by the monitors she has hooked up to his system.

Her wings droop, and she ex-vents a sigh. It's hard to trust that she isn't making a mistake by keeping him online, some cycles.

But what else can she do?

"Maybe I _should_ tell Megatron where you are," Skywarp says. Their leader might storm in and deactivate Starscream himself, but he also might order a team of medics and scientists to bring Screamer back from this marginal existence. Before Megatron went off to those other dimensions she might have risked it, confident that he might torture Starscream but wouldn't permanently offline him, even after what happened on Dirt's moon, but now...

No, she can't tell Megatron. Not yet, not until she's exhausted every other option.

She has a feeling Perceptor might be the key, and now that she knows he's fragging Dead End, she has some leverage she can use. Threatening his lover is the obvious choice but she isn't sure it'll work; he doesn't seem like he _does_ emotional stuff, so maybe he'll just shrug and refuse to help, and then she'll have a huge mess on her hands without anything to show for it.

She might have to risk it anyway, if she can't come up with anything else. If Thundercracker helps her keep control of the situation... But he hasn't even been back to see Starscream, hasn't said a word about their trine leader since learning about his condition, so even though the thought cuts deep through her co-processor, she can't depend on his help.

There's a box of energon goodies sitting on the floor outside her habsuite door. Skywarp assumes they're for Thundercracker and brings them in, totally planning to eat at least half, but pauses when she sees _her_ designation scribbled across the top.

Well, that's obviously a trap.

The only mecha who would possibly give her energon goodies for real is Thundercracker, and he'd just pass them to her when he saw her next. He certainly wouldn't leave them outside the doorway of the berthroom they share.

She flicks her wings dismissively at how poor of a prank it is, regardless of what the goodies have been doctored with, and leaves the box on her cluttered desk to be dealt with later. Astrotrain can do better than this, can't he?

Of course, because it _is_ obviously a prank, she returns to the habsuite after a particularly tedious meeting to find Thundercracker curled into a miserable ball on the berth, the opened box of goodies on the floor besides him.

Skywarp sighs. "Those had my designation on them," she says, approaching him with some caution. He doesn't tend to lash out when he's ill, but it happens- especially since she has no idea what was in the goodies, so she doesn't know how it's affecting him.

"I only ate the mercury ones," he says, words muffled by the pillow he's smashed his faceplate into. "You hate those."

Alright, that _is_ true. She still tsks at him, because he should know better than to eat things supposedly given to her without at least checking with her first.

Thundercracker groans, and he looks so miserable, wings flat and low, legs curled up defensively, that she decides to forgo poking fun at him until after he's feeling better enough that she won't feel guilty.

"Do you need the repair bay?" she asks, trusting him to be honest because he doesn't mind the medics for some reason.

He shakes his head. "Just feels bad," he says, and looks up at her with big, pleading optics. "What was in them?"

"Pit if I know," she says, and sits next to him on the berth. He immediately uncurls just enough to wrap around her, instead. She starts petting over his helm, which is the one and only way she knows to comfort anybot. "Astrotrain left them for me."

"Thought he likes you," Thundercracker says, onlining an optic again to peer at her.

"Eh," she hedges, stumbling over what should be a simple thought- of course he likes her, they've fragged enough times by now for her to have caught on if he hated her- but which just makes her uneasy. "He's trying to keep up with my pranks," she says.

"Idiot," he murmurs, and buries his faceplate against her hip.

"Yup," Skywarp agrees, and resumes stroking his helm.

Most likely it's just some feldspar that Astrotrain added, which is pretty easy to get ahold of and creates anything from a slightly unsettled fuel tank to a reaction not unlike a hangover and, critically, most mecha don't have the ability to detect it if they run a diagnostic. If that's the case, Thundercracker will be just fine by the next cycle once his filters have dealt with the mineral.

And if it's something else, something that is causing real damage, she's going to forcefuel Astrotrain enough of whatever it is to put him in stasis for a _month_.

After a little while, petting Thundercracker's helm gets really repetitive. "You wanna just recharge this off?" she asks hopefully.

He grumbles and tightens his grip where he's hugging her waist.

"TC, come on," she says, "I've got stuff to do."

"I'm extinguishing and you wanna leave me," he says, voice full of sorriness for himself. Some mecha think that Starscream is the only dramatic one in their trine, but they are so very wrong.

"You're not extinguishing," Skywarp says, and flicks one of his helm crests. He whimpers. "Can I get a data pad at least?"

Thundercracker groans theatrically, but his arms loosen enough for her to slip out. She grabs a couple of pads, and slips one of his into her subspace as well in case he starts feeling better enough to want a distraction. This time when she gets into the berth she sits up against the headboard, and he drapes himself over her lap, heavy reinforced chassis a comforting weight resting on her legs.

After a while he grabs the hand she's been using to tap at the data pad, and places it firmly on his helm, an unspoken demand for more head rubs.

She should take her hand back and keep working. But, eh. Skywarp switches her data pad out for one with a vid library, scrolling to find one Thundercracker will also enjoy. She refuses to watch the horrible organic vids he brought back from Dirt, but he doesn't like the competition shows she enjoys (mostly for the times their finished products collapse or combust before judging, it must be said), and neither of them can stand the stuff Starscream is into when he's not physically forcing them to watch alongside him.

She finds something simple and mindless, really meant for sparklings and not grown mecha but it's funny and even clever in places. She pets Thundercracker's helm over and over until he's deep in a recharge cycle, and slips down after him before the vid even runs out.

It takes her most of the cycle after Thundercracker is recovered to come up with suitable revenge. She can't let Astrotrain off the hook easy for this one- no one is allowed to mess with her trinemates but her- but she doesn't want him totally obliterated because she's still enjoying clanging him.

Once she has the idea she then has to scour half a dozen of Starscream's old storage caches to find the item she wants, but it's worth it. The device is huge and heavy, an enormous energy hog, and Megatron had technically ordered it destroyed after Screamer used it on him instead of the Autobots so she's going to have to be sneaky about getting it into the base.

Or not, because Megatron doesn't spend a lot of time outside his command center these cycles.

Skywarp can just barely fit it into her subspace, but because it has to be set up and charged before use, there's no getting around the fact that she'll have to teleport with it directly into Astrotrain's berthroom. She hates that she's become wary of her own outlier ability, that she has to be strategic about how often and how far she teleports so she doesn't end up feeling like the warp drive is attacking her from the inside.

This is worth the effort, though, and she purposefully hasn't teleported nearly the entire cycle beforehand. When she warps with the device there's some drag, but nothing that hangs her up, and then she's inside Astrotrain's berthroom with him recharging oblivious.

She almost feels bad, but. Not enough to stop her from pulling the trigger.

Green light shoots out from the device and envelopes him, and Skywarp watches eagerly as it takes effect immediately. He startles awake, of course, but he's already started shrinking down in size even before the green light dissipates. By the time his pedes hit the floor he's half the size he normally is, and then a quarter, and when he chases her into the hallway he's no taller than she is.

Her vocalizer keeps glitching with the laughter she's forcing through it.

"What did you do?" Astrotrain shouts, his voice a higher pitch than it normally is, and she can't tell if it's the stress he's putting out or a side effect of the shrink ray. He's still not done shrinking, but he's getting close- his helm is about level with her turbines now, and the smallest she could program the device to would bring him down just about half her height.

"What's that, pipsqueak?" she says, "You'll have to speak up, I can't hear you from down there."

He grimaces at her angrily, but then actually seems to look around and realize just what's happened to him. "You- you shrank me?" he asks, and wow so the voice thing _is_ because of the shrinking, good to know.

Skywarp grins at him, making sure to loom over him as she does so, taking a few image captures as his helm tilts way up to meet her optics. He's so tiny and cute like this! She can't resist reaching out and patting the top of his helm like he's a sparkling.

"Don't get stepped on," she says, and activates her warp drive because sometimes you just _need_ the dramatic exit. It aches a little, but she only jumps to the next hallway over, so everything holds up fine.

Unfortunately, Astrotrain decides to hide in his berthroom. And while that's probably smart of him, it's boring.

Skywarp had purposefully taken a shift at the security monitors just to have an excuse to spy on him scurrying around base at nearly the size of a minicon, and it's no fair of him to deny her the pleasure of watching him dodge mecha in the hallways and struggle to reach anything.

::Fremble:: she always picks which cassette to call at random, because it doesn't matter which twin she gets and it annoys them to be addressed like they're the same mech. ::I've got a job for you::

::I'm busy, Skywad:: whichever one of them it is says.

::You're not too busy for this:: she replies, and sends an image capture of pint-sized Astrotrain.

There's laughter on the line. ::Is that the big shuttle? He's tiny!::

::Tiny and trying to hide:: Skywarp says. ::You and Runzy can flush him out, right?::

::What's in it for us?:: he asks, and she flicks her wings in annoyance.

::A cube of high-grade:: she says.

::Two each:: he says, and ugh. Whatever. They'll just get overcharged halfway through and she can steal the other cubes back.

::Fine, but only if you get Dead End involved:: she says. Cruel, perhaps, to inflict him on Astrotrain when he's already down, but she's still feeling pretty vindictive.

::Deal:: the cassette says, and the line clicks off.

Skywarp smiles to herself and pulls up the camera feed nearest to his quarters, waiting.

Astrotrain is back to his regular, massive size by the time she sees him next with her own optics. That was the other reason the shrink-ray wasn't developed any further: the effects wear off in a little over a cycle, so you can't even microsize tech or whatever to make more easily-hidden weapons.

She smiles at him, and he glares.

"Never do anything like that again," he says, voice back to its regular low rumble.

"Don't poison my trinemate again and I won't have to," Skywarp shoots back, wings flashing from their relaxed state to a broad sweep, hands landing on her hips to emphasize the null rays on her arms.

His glare softens to something more confused. "I didn't."

"Those energon goodies you left," she says pointedly. "Obviously I wasn't going to eat something so suspicious, I'm not a halfwit, but TC didn't get the memo and was sick all cycle. I had to take him to repair bay to have his lines purged."

Astrotrain scrapes the tip of his pede against the floor, shuffling in place as much as he can with such a big frame in a crowded space. "Sorry," he mutters.

"What was in them, anyway? I thought feldspar at first, but..." She studies him, not totally willing to let him off the hook but mostly feeling like her revenge was already served.

"Uh, potassium sulfate," he says.

Skywarp quickly queries her internal database, then nods once she's scanned the entry. Less common than feldspar, but likewise more annoying than deadly unless you seriously overdose on it- and even Thundercracker would have noticed eating a couple cyberkilos of the stuff. "Well now you know," she says, "My trine is off-limits."

He dips his helm, but he's still frowning like he's confused. "What _is_ a trine?" he asks, the words slow and a little reluctant.

She cycles air through her vents and ponders how to answer. He doesn't really want a lesson on seeker culture and history, she is sure, he just wants the same kind of reassurance she gave him when Thundercracker first arrived. Even still, it's hard to sum up. A trine isn't a bond between sparkmates, nor a gestalt link, nor is it like being twin-sparked. But because only a seeker-type spark has the ability to support the trine link, it's a mystery to most mecha.

"It's probably easiest to think of it like a combiner's gestalt," Skywarp says eventually. "We don't combine, obviously, but it's... similar enough, I guess." How frustrating, to be unable to put into words something so important to her fundamental functioning.

He doesn't look any more enlightened, and she figures that maybe he isn't very familiar with gestalts, either.

"Do you actually want to know, or are you just worried that us fragging is a problem?" she asks bluntly.

Astrotrain shrugs one shoulder. "I don't know much about seekers," he says.

She regards him for another moment. "Alright. I've got some drills to run, but after that we can get into it," she says.

It doesn't occur to her until after she's heading back out that she just made plans with him not to frag, not to run a job, but just to _talk_.

It shouldn't be weird, she's had fragbuddies before, but there's something about Astrotrain that just demands her attention in ways she doesn't know how to think of. And to be planning on explaining to him the cornerstone of seeker society, the bond that lives in her spark and makes her part of a greater whole, that just feels almost too much somehow.

She comms him when she's free, and he replies with coordinates to the roof of the tallest part of the base. Skywarp flies up and finds him laying down directly on the tiles, hands under his helm and optics focused on the sky up above.

She feints like she's going to dive at him, but Astrotrain just smiles lopsidedly, a little too soft to call a smirk, and waits for her to land before sitting himself up.

"Nice view," she says.

He shrugs, and pulls something out of his subspace. She tenses- was this just setting up for his payback?- but it's a couple cubes of energon, glowing brighter than usual. "Want some high-grade?" he says.

Skywarp is still a little suspicious, but now that she thinks about it, being overcharged will probably make this easier. She plucks one of the cubes from his palm and unseals it. "Not laced with anything, is it?" she asks, keeping her tone light and playful.

"Not this time," he says. She waits for him to take one for himself, knocking the entire astroliter back like a shot, before sipping from her cube.

It's not great stuff, clearly distilled by someone who just wanted an end product to get buzzed off, but she can't taste anything that shouldn't be there and so it's fine with her.

They sit in silence for a while, drinking high-grade and watching the clouds roll across the sky. By the time she's finished half the cube her system is pleasantly warm, tension being replaced with the looseness of extra charge.

"So what did you want to know?" she says, glancing up at his faceplate and then away again.

She hears him shift slightly, gears and cables and the slide of metal on metal, and assumes he's shrugging.

"Trines, right?" Skywarp prompts.

"Yeah," he says, "I guess." He's had at least five cubes of high-grade already, but considering his regular ration is twenty astroliters, she doubts he's all that affected.

She takes another sip of her own cube. Even having had time to think about it, she doesn't know what to say. "Trines are bonded," she says, "But it's different than the link between sparkmates, we don't offline if the other deactivates and it's not... Sometimes a trine is a _relationship_ , but not always. I think it's most like a gestalt, because when we're in the air..." She trails off, optics shuttering as her fuzzy processor throws a sense-memory at her. "When we're flying, it's like we're really a part of one another. Wings and fuselage, maybe. But not, because we're still separate? I'm me, and TC is TC, and neither of us is Screamer, but we... fit together."

Astrotrain makes a vague noise. "Do all seekers have a trine?"

She onlines her optics again, and drinks some more high-grade. The cube's nearly empty but she has room for another. "No," she says, and nearly leaves it there except he's glancing at her with curiosity, like he _is_ actually interested in what she's saying. "Most will trine at some point, it's part of our coding to want the bond- trines are stable, you see? A pair is too fragile, and four or more gets too big, scattered. Three is the right number. But not everyone wants that, or can find other seekers they click with enough."

It's always struck Skywarp as a pretty awful way to exist, bad enough for other frametypes to be alone like that but she can't even begin to imagine why a seeker would choose it. She hardlined with Slipstream deep enough once to see a little of the other femme's thought processes, her contentment to be unattached, but even with that evidence it's still hard for Skywarp to fathom.

She tips back the last of the high-grade in her cube and reaches for another. "It's about belonging," she says. "I belong to my trine, and they're mine, too. We take care of each other, protect each other, and we'll have sparklings together some cycle, if this war ever ends. But not like, like-" she pauses, fuzzy processor trying to come up with the correct words. "Not like I can't interface who I want." She grins up at him, his frame sparkly in the fading sunlight as her optics struggle to render him correctly through the haze of overcharge. "I like 'facing you," she tells him.

"I like it, too," Astrotrain says, slowly like it's a secret, or he's having trouble processing the information she's tossing him.

"Of course you do," she replies, "I'm great at it."

He laughs, loud and booming, and she laughs too even though she wasn't really joking (she's a _fantastic_ clang, thanks very much) because it's just so nice to hear him laugh.

"Oh, I know!" Skywarp says, jolting herself up straight as the idea occurs to her. "Let's hardline, I'll show you how the trine bond feels."

He's still chuckling a bit, but she's totally serious. Overcharged as she knocks back her second cube- Primus, whoever distilled this stuff knew what they were doing- but serious.

"Come on," she says, and clambers up onto his massive lap, his hands coming up to support her with a gentle touch like it's automatic. "You liked it last time, right?"

"Yeah," Astrotrain says, and she wonders if he's remembering her in his cockpit, writhing shamelessly inside his alt mode as they cabled midair. "Yeah, okay."

She grins in victory, hands already caressing the plating in front of her. "Where's your array?"

"Um, I usually don't hardline in root mode," he says, and she looks up at his faceplate to gauge where he's going with this. One of the glass panels on the side of his chest retracts, revealing a slim cavity. "Might be hard to get to."

Skywarp hoists herself up to see better, optics illuminating the dark space. On one side there's his alt mode's dashboard, altered and folded to fit a more compressed space, and on the other side there's stuff she isn't well-versed enough in anatomy to name but which is clearly part of his internal structure.

"Huh," she says. There's almost enough space for her to crawl all the way inside, like a sparkling sheltering in their creator's cockpit, but even overcharged she isn't planning to test that hypothesis. She can see his hardline array on the dashboard, the cover panel open so his port and jack gleam in the red glow of her optical light, and it _should_ be close enough to stretch the cables through his opened window but she definitely can't do it while clinging to him like this. "Can you lie on your side?" she asks, because that seems like it'll give the best angle to work with, if his frame allows the position.

"Not really," Astrotrain says.

"Mkay, on your back then." At least she already knows he can lie that way.

His hand cups around her, holding her in place as he shifts to lie down. It's a good thing she doesn't mind the view of him lying underneath her, she thinks with a fuzzy giggle, because he sure seems to end up there a lot.

He hums a questioning note, and she shakes her helm because it's not important.

What _is_ important is finding a comfortable position where she can plug in to him, because obviously this isn't going to be a strictly informational interface. She squirms in place, still secured by his hand around her chassis, until she finds a balance between comfortable-enough and still able to get her cable in through his window.

She'll have to do all the plugging again, she thinks, and reaches in through his open window to brush her digits against his exposed array.

He shivers, the movement obvious where she's pressed along his big frame. Normally she'd play with the port, tease at the jack, but frankly the way she has to stretch and bend to reach is uncomfortable. Skywarp eases his jack out of its housing and pays out the cable, but instead of just holding onto it while getting her own jack ready, she sticks it into her intake.

Underneath her Astrotrain jerks with a noise like his gears have all ground to a halt at once, and she smiles around her mouthful of hot metal, charge crackling against the fluid bridge almost enough to sting her intake.

He chokes on her name like he's swallowed his glossa and she sucks, hard enough for the muted sensors to definitely pick up, and then slides the jack out past her lips so she can speak.

"Problem?" she asks, sweet and innocent, but ruins the effect by giggling uncontrollably.

"You're going to fry me," he says, sounding not really opposed to the idea.

"Maybe," she agrees, and gives his jack one more good suck before sliding it into her port. The very first brush of his system against hers is enough to make her shudder- Primus, but his system generates so much charge just at the baseline level. If he wanted to, he could just overload her again and again, near instantly.

The thought is appealing, but Skywarp does vaguely remember that she's hardlining him for a reason. She tugs her own jack free and has to awkwardly fish around his interior to find his port because he's already pulsing at her over the connection, and it would be so easy to get carried away. She manages to get her jack plugged in, though, and the bridge flares bright and steady between them.

For a couple of astrocycles she can't do anything except revel in the feeling, his thumb stroking her wings right at the base as he holds her steady, and it would be so, so easy.

"Right," she says, resetting her vocalizer with a click. "The trine bond." She's never tried to show it to someone before, never needed to explain it. How deep into her systems is she going to have to allow him access?

She starts by lifting away the firewalls separating her interface server and her CPU, which basically grants him surface-level access to her processor itself. Just the thought of being so exposed is almost unbearably thrilling, though whether that thrill is excitement or terror she can't really say.

Astrotrain doesn't need to reciprocate to the same degree, not really, but she can feel him widening the connection on his end as well. He sends a pulse of charge at her, enough to make her gasp and tingle in her extremities.

Then he dives inside of her, his consciousness slamming up into her system with all the grace of Bruticus on a bender. She's quick to queue up a memory from her core files, because the alternative is to forget about the whole reason she's giving him this much access and just chase what's sure to be a spectacular overload.

The memory is tinged with nostalgia, fuzzy around the edges from minor data loss. She and Astrotrain watch through the optics of a much-younger Skywarp as Starscream, shiny and new and not yet twisted by all that is still to come, flashes up on the Academy's stage to receive some award or other. He takes it with both hands, firmly convinced that it is no more than his due, and then his optics find her and Thundercracker in the audience and he _smiles_ , proud and happy, and she feels Thundercracker's hand squeeze her thigh, brushes her wing against his because the Academy's chairs are all too close together for flight frames but they wouldn't have missed this for anything.

And in that moment she knows, in a flash of spark-deep certainty like she's never been certain of anything else in her existence, that she's going to trine with them.

Skywarp slows the memory down, time going syrupy like thick oil to savor the emotions she'd felt. Can Astrotrain understand the feeling that struck her? How her coding compiled with a rush of _rightness_ , how her spark sang?

Rather than ask him directly, she pulls up another memory. Not their first flight newly-trined, because honestly they were a _mess_ for cycles afterwards as the bond settled and Screamer reflexively freaked out about how permanent it all was and Thundercracker sulked at feeling unwanted because of Starscream's freaking out and she couldn't stick to a single thought process for a nanocycle because of all the new input. Instead she shows him a flight not long after the war started.

If they all flew to the extent of their abilities without regard for the others, it would be chaos. Worse than those first cycles by a hundredfold. The beauty of being trine is knowing exactly how to move and pace themselves, Starscream rocketing ahead for a showy maneuver that gives steady Thundercracker time to catch up, herself flitting between them as easy as activating her warp drive, weaving the gaps together.

They'd been on some unnamed alien planet, with an atmosphere that was like silk on their wings and terrain that spreads out before them in a beautiful swirl of shifting colors. And it hadn't mattered that they were here to fight a war because they were together, perfectly in sync, Thundercracker humming a song through the trine bond and Starscream calling out every novel compound his scanners detect, and Skywarp ignoring the both of them to obnoxiously list as many rhymes as she can think of for their spaceship's designation.

It's a golden memory, one she wishes she'd had the foresight to save in higher fidelity.

In the present day as the memory fades Astrotrain still projects a feeling of vague confusion over the hardline connection, and she tries to come up with another memory to explain.

Before she can, however, he's offering up a memory of his own through the bridge. She slips a little further into his system and lets it play, a wave of disorientation because of the contextual data that doesn't match her own frametype washing over her, then dissipating as she focuses.

Astrotrain is young in this memory, not quite a sparkling anymore but definitely not a fully-upgraded mech, and still he's already outpaced the average frame size by a mechanometer or two. He's sad as he looks at a line of transport shuttles outside some dingy warehouse, nonsapient vehicles waiting to be called on for drudge work.

Skywarp realizes in a flash as more data feeds in that he's here to scan one as his new alt mode, and he's sad because he doesn't want to give up the alt he already has, even if it's not as practical, as valuable for future work.

The Astrotrain in the memory doesn't do what she would do, which is run away. A seeker can really only be one thing, though the details of the design may vary- just the thought of trying to force herself to take on an alt mode that gets rid of her wings is nearly enough to tear her from the memory.

But she keeps watching because he wouldn't have shown her this for no reason, and because she likes the way the contextualization data shifts in and out of greater focus, little glimpses of Astrotrain at his core. In the memory he activates his trans-scanner, the beam capturing the details of a shuttle that looks nothing like his current form.

When the scanner finishes he transforms to cement the new code into his t-cog, a flurry of motion as plating shifts and adjusts to a brand new alt mode- and joy, bright and sharp and overwhelming with the force of his memory, crashes over her. He flips from shuttle to his old alt form, the one he thought he'd have to be rid of forever, and back again in a dizzying series of transformations.

This is when he discovered he was a triple-changer, Skywarp realizes, buoyed along by the waves of his delight. The coding would have been in his system when he was sparked, of course, but it might have stayed dormant forever if he hadn't found the right trigger.

She laughs aloud, or perhaps only through the interface bridge between them.

It's not the same thing as the trine bond, of course, but yes- yes, she tells him. It's similar enough, that rush of _rightness_ , of being complete, of having something no one can ever take away again.

The memory fades away with a deep and abiding sense of satisfaction.

Sharing memories like this has left their systems entwined, data flowing freely over their cables and the sort of coding transfers that will leave her defragging bits of him out for cycles to come. She should dislike the thought more than she does, probably.

Rather than bringing up another memory, Skywarp goes deep into her core system to highlight part of her coding for him. He probably won't be able to actually read it, unless he's far more skilled in decryption than she expects, but he doesn't need to.

:: _This is them_ :: she tells him. The sections of coding that anchor her trine bond, that take the spark-to-spark-to-spark quantum connection and turns it into a link for communication, interprets the signals into something her processor can make sense of.

Astrotrain is careful as he flows over the lines of data, and she hasn't been stupid enough to allow him editing access but it strikes her that he could do untold damage anyway, just with a careless surge of charge into her circuits at the wrong time. But he's gentle, looking and appreciating and then drawing back to her interface server when she pulls her firewalls up again.

It's good, all of it, but despite the teasing at first there hasn't been anything really arousing about the interface, just using the hardline connection for its intended purpose. She's revved up, capacitors eager to fill with charge and send her to a dizzying overload, but doesn't think hardlining is quite what she wants right now.

"Hey," Skywarp says, vocalizer fritzing static from the excess charge still running through her fuel system. "You do spark stuff?"

She's got the vague idea of showing him the trine bond directly- is that even possible?- but really she just wants to sink into this warm feeling between them via mutual overloads, and she can tell that it'll take too much coordination to wrangle her processor into reciprocating over the hardline.

Astrotrain rubs his digits along her spinal strut. "We'll have to unplug," he says after a moment.

And that's a shame, of course, but sacrifices must be made or something like that. She eases the connection down to a baseline trickle, closing her system back up, and fishes around inside the narrow cavity of his cab until she can gently tug her jack free of his port, and guide his own cable back to its housing.

She feels untethered, literally and metaphorically, processor spinning with excess charge and bits of fragmented code that doesn't belong to her.

Then he's helping her up onto the center of his chest, and she watches as his armored plating splits apart and transforms away, shifting aside to bare him to his most vulnerable place.

His spark glows through the crystal covering of his sparkcase, not nearly as large as she thought it might be given the rest of his frame- it's barely larger than hers, really, glowing pure bright white. She scrambles to get her own chest open, digits fumbling at the manual latches on her warp drive before finally cracking it open.

She doesn't have a crystal cover anymore, of course, doesn't have anything that would interfere with the warp drive's functioning. Air breezes over her bare spark and she shivers, unable to give Astrotrain any time to look and touch before she has to press herself against his still-closed sparkcase to instinctively protect herself.

His casing moved forward in his chassis as he opened, but even so, their size difference means that she is laying in a valley between his pulled-back plating, her frame swallowed by his. The rush to get her spark out of the unprotected open means their fields crash together in a bright shock, even through the cover, and he cries out underneath her.

Skywarp's frame locks up as sparkmerging protocols spring into action, preventing damage to herself or to Astrotrain as their sparks crackle and connect, swirling and merging and pulsing, the most intimate kind of pleasure it's possible for her system to feel ricocheting through her. His engine rumbles with untold power, his systems running so hot at the core of him it's almost uncomfortable against her plating.

Then the crystal cover over his spark slides away and there's nothing but pure energy, sparks flaring and merging with ringing bliss as their frequencies play off one another's directly. There's nothing she has to do to make it better, no friction to chase or data to send, the only thing they can both do is surrender to the feeling of their central components joining.

A sparkmerge is kind of like a temporary bond, less on actual communication and more a sense of connection, like she has his spark nestled besides hers in her chassis. Not something she could deal with all the time, not for anyone outside of her trine, but right now the feeling of their sparks aligning is so pleasurable she wants to cry.

She overloads instead, static crackling off her plating and off her spark, Astrotrain right there with her, electricity dancing through the cradle of his opened chest where she lies at the center of him. Her spark shivers, twitching in and out of subspace without the steadying presence of the warp drive and she screams, her sensornet on fire, frame straining against the lock on her struts, wishing it would go on forever.

It never lasts long enough, the connection disrupted with her spark's inability to keep to one state of existence when she's like this, and instead of a gradual easing off the merge snaps quick and sudden. There's a metaphor there, probably, but she's not exactly focusing on poetics at the moment.

Skywarp stays where she is for an astrocycle or two more, totally depleted of charge, her system quiet and still. Then she forces herself back enough for Astrotrain's spark cover to slide into place again, and reaches for her warp drive to shut herself back up as well. If he has any thoughts about the end of the merge being unusual, he doesn't give them voice.

He even helps her out of the hollow in his chest, hands plucking her away so his chassis can close itself together, protected once again by sturdy armor.

"Gonna recharge," she mumbles, already halfway there. She always gets so tired after sparkmerging, it's better than a tranquilizer for quieting her completely, frame and processor both working on minimum levels.

"We're outside," Astrotrain says.

She grumbles out something that might serve as an answer, totally unconcerned. They're in the core of Decepticon territory _and_ there's a ceasefire on, if she wants to recharge out under the open sky she's damn well going to.

He apparently doesn't agree, because she unshutters her optics to watch him transform into his alt mode around her, transferring her from nice warm chest to sprawled out on his flooring. She groans her dismay and he chuckles, the sound warm, almost fond. She sticks her glossa out at his holo-avatar, and his laughter deepens.

She struggles into her berth somehow, burrowing in against Thundercracker's side until he shifts and covers her, dense frame perfect against hers.

"You've been spending a lot of time with Astrotrain," he says, quiet enough she could probably pretend not to have heard.

"Mm," Skywarp hums, still fuzzy and blissed out from the high-grade and the memories and most of all the spark-based overload. "He's fun." And it's easy to be with him when he doesn't know her, doesn't have any expectations, isn't comparing her to her trinemates or anyone else.

"Good," Thundercracker says after a moment. "I'm glad you're having fun."

"Hey, remember that planet?" she says, vocalizer slurring as she fends off recharge for another few moments, "With the colors and the clouds, and it was just us three?"

"What planet?" he replies, and she tries to online her optics but can't.

"We should get Star, go flying there again," Skywarp says, or tries to say. Recharge claims her before she finds out if Thundercracker hears her, if he replies.

She's patrolling the Line on the other side of the planet when her comm starts blaring with Autobot sightings. That rotary flier again, looping circles over still-ruined Altihex in broad daylight. A trap, or diversion? Probably, but Skywarp still has a duty to check it out.

She activates her warp drive without a second thought and-

For a moment it's like she's stuck, somehow, the pain she's coming to expect during a teleportation stretching on and on, like her spark is trying to batter down the cage of her warp drive and escape. She rematerializes mid-air and falls, _falls_ , like she isn't a seeker sparked to fly but is some grounder shoved off a cliff, too shocked and hurt to do more than clutch at her chest.

She does manage to activate her thrusters at the last astrocycle, so at least she doesn't hit the planet's surface at terminal velocity, but it's a near thing. Skywarp lies in a heap half a klik from where she started, most of that distance a result of her shedding momentum as she collided with the ground, and feels fear rip through her emotional co-processor until it's the only thing in her awareness.

Something is not right.

::Commander Skywarp:: her comm buzzes, because she can't even get a few moments to herself to contemplate the horror of whatever is happening inside her frame. ::Your orders for the Autobot?::

::Deactivate them:: she replies curtly. ::Don't pursue past the wall, though::

The seeker on the other end clicks an acknowledgement, and Skywarp is relieved that they're not asking questions about why she isn't joining them after all. Weakness is unacceptable among the Decepticons, if her malfunction becomes common knowledge...

Astrotrain comms her while she's in Hook's examination room, chest uneasily bared. She would rather be anywhere but here, but he's the only one with access to Shockwave's schematics and she can admit that this goes beyond what she can manage by poking around in the mirror.

"Far as I can tell, there's nothing physically wrong with you," Hook says after what seems to be the tenth scan. "Your spark's still as crazy as ever, and the drive looks intact. You didn't take any hits to the chest lately?"

Skywarp shakes her helm. She had some minor damage from the battle when the Autobots arrived on-planet, and some more fighting the Quintessons, but nothing that penetrated the armor around her warp drive.

"You're fueling, recharging?" he asks.

"Yeah," she says.

Astrotrain pings her again, and it's just a glyph message this time so she checks it. ::Having a good day; up for making it better?:: She barely suppresses a laugh at the irony.

"Maybe it's a side effect of the broken trine bond," Hook says, contemplative. "You seekers can be so delicate..."

Skywarp bristles, both at the insult (her frametype is _not_ delicate, they're finely tuned masterpieces of engineering!) and in reflexive protectiveness over her very much functional trine. She reaches into her chest and snaps the warp drive shut, cutting off his access to anything more than surface scans. "So you don't know anything, is what you're telling me," she says.

"I'd prefer to pull the warp drive out and fabricate a new one," Hook says, and her wings slice through the air in a high defensive arc entirely without any direction from her, because removing it would- she'd have to have her spark moved to a stasis field, jarred and offline, and who knows what would happen to the rest of her in the meantime? What would happen to Starscream, if she isn't there to make sure he doesn't deactivate?

"No," she croaks out.

"But I doubt Megatron will let me take his Air Commander out of commission for that long," he finishes as if she hasn't spoken, looking mildly disappointed.

That's right, Skywarp reminds herself, she isn't just another soldier right now. Until Starscream is functional again she's the Acting Air Commander, she's too valuable for a medic to knock offline on a whim. Never mind that Thundercracker is right there as an obvious replacement, or that Megatron might not even care who takes her place because one seeker is much the same as the next to him if they aren't Screamer.

"So what, then?" she says, vocalizer even and steady.

Hook shrugs. "Take a general supplement with your energon, recharge at least half the night cycle, don't use your warp drive more than you have to. Merge with Thundercracker, that might stabilize your spark and programming," he says, as if it's not horrifying to hear a medic suggest interfacing as a _medical treatment_. Gross. "There doesn't seem to be anything physically wrong so unless you want me to give debugging your processor a shot..."

She shudders at the very thought. "No, definitely not," she says, because there's letting a medic upload new antivirus software or programming patches, and then there's _allowing Hook to root around her base coding_.

"Then there's nothing I can do for it," he says.

"Thanks," Skywarp says with barely constrained sarcasm, feeling a sudden kinship with Starscream and his disdain for medics. She's exactly where she started, except now it's been added to her file that she's having problems with her outlier ability. Great.

She storms out of the repair bay and is halfway to her habsuite before realizing that she doesn't want to see Thundercracker right now. Well, no, she _does_ , but she'll tell him what's wrong and he'll get worried, protective, maybe he'll even sweep into Hook's office and try to demand some sort of better solution out of him. And she doesn't want to be explain her problems right now, doesn't want to spill her processor to the mech who's been at her side and in her spark for millions of stellar cycles, who is already upset and suspicious and doesn't need any more added to his load.

She comms Astrotrain instead, because it's simple and easy to clang him, just moving parts and friction and a welcome lack of anything deeper. ::What did you have in mind?::

Ever since this ceasefire started, Megatron keeps sending her on spy missions. Skywarp had been excited the first few times before realizing that it's much less fun than she'd thought, mostly stuffing herself into a hiding place and then staying perfectly still and silent until either she hears something worthwhile, or the Autobots notice her and start shooting.

It's basically torture for her- she is _not_ meant to be quiet and motionless for long stretches- but it's still an honor and an important responsibility. Also, she already tried to fob it off only to be told by Soundwave that she can't send random seekers in her place because they don't have a high enough clearance.

Most of what she learns on these trips is useless. The Autobots are pretty good at keeping the important conversations out of the open, and she's not built for crawling through ventilation shafts. (And really, _why_ isn't one of Soundwave's brats doing this? All they're good for is sneaking around)

Every once in a while, though, she stumbles on something worthwhile.

Like seeing Optimus Prime freeze in the middle of his sentence as the Matrix of Leadership floats out of his chest. She's never seen the Matrix with her own optics before- why would she have?- and it's both more and less impressive than she imagined it would be, glowing a bright blue-white from deep inside a seemingly bottomless crystal and yet fragile, like a single blast would finish it off.

Skywarp aims a null ray, but doesn't shoot. She's heard enough times that the Matrix can't be destroyed by normal means to believe it, and while Prime has his chest just _open_ right there in the middle of the room, spark practically begging to be extinguished, she's reluctant to take that shot either. She doesn't have any problems taking down the enemy by whatever means she can, but not only is Prime usually reserved for Megatron alone to deactivate, but if she shoots and misses, or just doesn't deactivate him immediately, then she'll have thrown away her existence for nothing because the Autobots will offline her before she can escape.

Without her warp drive functioning, she's so painfully vulnerable.

She's starting to reconsider as this display drags on, Prime just standing there, intake still open where he was cut off. Even the Autobots circled around get bored, chatting among themselves too quietly for her to even pick up whatever undoubtedly dull topics they're discussing.

And then the Matrix slots back inside Prime's chassis, and he starts speaking like he wasn't just totally glitched out. "Gather everyone, the Primes have spoken."

Skywarp really doesn't want to stay stuffed into this crevice any longer, her servos aching for her to get up and move, but this is obviously big news. Megatron would deactivate her if she left before finding out what the Matrix has communicated.

She almost wishes she'd left anyway, once she learns what Optimus Prime has to relate. The Autobots wanting to destroy Megatron's Matrix, that's hardly a revelation. But them wanting to destroy it because the alternate universe's Megatron had tainted it with Dark Energon and its very presence is a threat to the integrity of their entire dimension...

That's shocking enough to nearly make her tumble out of her hiding place.

Most mecha don't even know what Dark Energon is, let alone what it can do, but she hasn't spent millions of stellar cycles listening to Starscream plot out horrific schemes without picking up a few things here and there. Whether there's any truth to it originating from the Unmaker she can't say- leave that to the theologians- but she _does_ know that it's unstable, addictive, corruptive.

And Megatron's been carrying its taint around inside his chest since returning from the multiverse, nestled right up against his very spark. It explains his erratic behavior, at least, the sense of unease she feels when she interacts with him.

Skywarp offlines her optics. She has to tell Megatron, of course. Tell him his Matrix is poisoned, that he has to discard it- as if! She clamps a hand over her intake to stifle the noises she wants to make, strained laughter or maybe a sob.

In his right mind he might know better than to mess with Dark Energon, but if he's unknowingly been exposing himself to it all this time, feeding off its power, then he will almost certainly do anything to keep it regardless of the source.

What can she do except report what she's learned, though? He has to be warned that the Autobots will attack, she can't betray the Decepticon cause by lying or even just obscuring their goal- even if she thinks, maybe, possibly, just this once, the Autobots might have the right idea.

Her processor is a snarled mess as it tries to churn out a way around this, her fuel tank roiling like she's poured in molten sodium instead of energon. She wishes Starscream were online, a sudden and fierce cramp of longing going through her, because he'd know what to do. Even if (when) it blows up in all of their faceplates he _always_ knows what to do with total conviction and she wishes she could just turn this situation over to him.

Skywarp isn't any closer to a solution by the time the Autobots have departed, leaving her able to squirm out of her hiding place again. She almost wishes they'd caught her this time, just because then whatever happens next won't be her fault.


End file.
